Share this story

On Tuesday, the US-based company Rocket Lab announced that it had begun to explore the possibility of reusing its smallsat launch vehicle, Electron. This represented a change of heart for the company, whose chief executive, Peter Beck, had previously dismissed the possibility of re-using the Electron booster.

To understand what led to this decision, Ars spoke with Beck at length on Wednesday. During the interview, we also discussed SpaceX's recent announcement that it was entering the smallsat launch market with dedicated rideshare missions on its Falcon 9 rocket. Because the whole interview may be of interest to space aficionados, we're sharing all of it.

Further Reading

Ars Technica: So, after all this time, how did you come to this decision to embrace rocket reusability?

Peter Beck: There's nothing like actually flying and gathering data. The Electron vehicle is really heavily instrumented on every flight, with thousands of channels of data. We're a conservative bunch, and we like to make sure we have lots of margins. We've been able to understand what sort of structural margins we have during ascent, and the performance of the vehicle. And in parallel to that, we've been ramping up at a hugely aggressive rate. We built a new factory, and we're continuing to expand and hire at a crazy rate. We're seeing the production delivery times get smaller, and a stage is rolling out of the factory every 30 days now. But really, we're just nowhere close to keeping up with the demand from our customers. We need to ramp production even more aggressively.

At the end of last year I started to really look into the possibility of recovery, and the team looked at the data. We formed a recovery team and started hiring early this year, and they've been working on it ever since then. And every flight we've been instrumenting more and more and understanding more and more. In parallel with that, we've been building computational fluid dynamic models and structural analysis models and really validating those models with our data to understand what's going on. As we understood the problem better and better, we got to the point where we were able to propose solutions that we felt were really quite feasible. At that point, we committed to the project and started upgrades. You'll see on Flight 10 a few obvious changes on the first stage of Electron, and we felt this was a good opportunity to talk about it given that the jig will be up soon with people starting to notice stuff. We'd be busted pretty quick.

Rocket Lab's plan for Electron reuse.

Explain how going for reuse is better than just trying to continue to scale production of the Electron rocket.

We're trying to do both. Scaling production is not a trivial thing. We need to quadruple production over the next couple of years. You can take any product on this planet—a chair or a consumer product—and say I want a 4x production of that product. And that's no trivial thing to do. When you have a supply chain as they have in the aerospace industry, which is really quite fragile, and you're not just asking yourself to scale four times—you're asking your suppliers to scale four times. Take the engine, for example: even if we wanted to double engine production and order a bunch more printers, those printers are six- or 12-month lead time. Really, we need to be all in. We're crazy-expanding our factories and hiring. But this is an additional step we need to take to increase launch opportunities.

Did the inspiration for this recovery method come from Armadillo, which tried something similar, or some other company?

The idea of mid-air capture has a long history, right back to the Corona missions in the 1950s and 1960s. That's not new. And it's funny, if you look at the helicopter capture, most people think that's the hardest thing to do. But that's really not hard at all. That's the bit I'm least worried about being successful. It's getting it through the atmosphere and down to a sensible speed that is really where the challenge lies. That's where a lot of the innovation is going to come from in this program. We have some very unique aerodynamic decelerators that we'll be employing to control the reentry but also to scrub the velocity.

When you say "aerodynamic decelerators," does that look like a fin or what?

Yeah, I guess that's kind of the magic of what we're trying to do. That's something that we've been a little bit less public on, some of the techniques we're developing for that.

And when do you hope to start trying this out in practice? Is there a target for the first recovery?

Yeah, so the next flight on the pad here is an important one [Flight 8, due to launch later this month]. We have some critical flight instrumentation on that. Flight 10 is a block upgrade, with some visible changes to the booster. Really, after flight 10, there will be new things we're trying on every flight. But look, this is a very, very difficult thing to do, and I'm reluctant to define a flight number that we're going to do a full recovery on. It's a very methodical and iterative approach we're taking here.

How many times do you hope to reuse a booster?

If we could reuse it once we've effectively doubled production. Once would be wonderful. Anything more would be really fantastic.

Further Reading

Did you take inspiration from SpaceX's success with reusing rockets over the last 2.5 years? Did that maybe push you over the line from, "It would be nice to do this," to "Hey, we could actually do this"?

There's no argument that SpaceX has reset the industry standard. What they've done has reset everybody's expectations about what a 21st-century launch vehicle should look like. We always felt that recovery was not achievable on a small launch vehicle because, to do it propulsively, you end up actually building a large launch vehicle because you need so much propellant. Things don't scale very well. That's why we used to say publicly we didn't see a path toward reusability. But we're taking a very different approach here, one that was required to mesh what we have with a small launch vehicle.

Business must be pretty good if you need all these Electrons.

We've brought something to the market that was sorely needed, and we think we've hit the sweet spot for payloads. It's enough that you can rideshare a few CubeSats, but it's really spectacularly ideal for a dedicated smallsat launch. A 150kg or 200kg spacecraft—the Electron really suits it well. Launch has always been constrained, but we're helping to ease the problem.

Further Reading

What do you think about the competition? SpaceX is entering the smallsat launch market. There are dozens of companies trying to build vehicles like Electron.

Ultimately, I think an increase in launch opportunities is good for everybody. It stimulates more opportunities, and it enables people to get on orbit more often. The limitation for SpaceX, obviously, is that they're flying once a year to one particular orbit. Generally, the kind of customer that's flying on Electron is not looking to rideshare—they're looking for a dedicated service and all of the massive advantages that gives you. So, you know, from Rocket Lab's perspective, we don't see any challenge or impact to our business. It's a very different customer that will fly on us versus a Falcon 9. But what I would say is there are quite a lot of launch vehicles in the 1,000kg payload range that are under development at the moment, and I think that's going to be a real challenge for those guys. Basically their model is rideshare, and when you're going head-to-head with an established player like SpaceX, you know, that has proven flight credibility and opportunities, that will be a real challenge.

How much does having a big head start, like you do, help in this kind of environment?

I lost count, personally, at 114 small-launch vehicle companies. I was told this morning that it was announced at this conference that there are now 130. I think actually flying and delivering payloads with high accuracy—it's a long way away from someone who is looking to get to their first flight. What we found is that it took the same amount of time, capital, and energy to get to first flight that it did to get to flying once a month. I think flying is everything, and then flying regularly is even more. A customer just has to decide if they're going to risk flying on a vehicle that has yet to be developed and proven and risk losing a time slot on a vehicle that is already operational.

Rocket Lab keeps saying "flying once a month," but so far this year (and late last year) they're closer to "flying every other month." Which, don't get me wrong, is still impressive: if they fly customer payloads six times in 2019, that's six more launches than any of their competitors will have this year. (A few claim they'll have their first test launch this year, but it took Rocket Lab 1.5 years to go from "first all-up launch attempt" to "regularly flying customer payloads," and I trust Beck when he says that that type of ramp-up is just as hard as the initial launch.)

Still, it feels like the "Rocket Lab steamroller" has yet to actually materialize. I'm sure it will, just like the "SpaceX steamroller" did, but they're not there yet.

Still, it feels like the "Rocket Lab steamroller" has yet to actually materialize. I'm sure it will, just like the "SpaceX steamroller" did, but they're not there yet.

It took SpaceX the better part of a decade from the first flight of its Falcon 9 rocket to get to "Steamroller status." Rocket Lab is on a pretty good cadence right now for a company that only started flying in May, 2017. They probably make once a month by the end of this year, or so, which would be damned impressive. (Especially when you look at their competition in the smallsat launch industry).

Anyone have a guess as to how Rocket Lab plans to deal with the problem of reentry? Falcon 1, and the first couple Falcon 9 flights, were equipped with landing parachutes but never got the chance to use them, as they didn't survive reentry. That forced them to use retropropulsion for the reentry burn, to shed speed, maintain control, and protect the rocket motors, and they figured once they had that, a landing burn was easier than parachutes + saltwater hardening (Falcon 9 is too big for a helicopter to snag, so they just planned to soft-land in the ocean).

I had a theory that Rocket Lab might put all the heavy batteries at the top, and try to re-enter nose-first, with a large heatshield there. But the animation clearly showed it reentering the atmosphere engines-first. IIRC Electron stages at higher altitude and velocity than Falcon 9, so it should have even more difficulty.

10 years ago, who would have even considered that as a reasonable thing? Of course, there will be a shakeout but what an interesting time to be a spectator.

I'd expect that a single digit number of them will ever get to the launch pad.

Which do you think are most likely to achieve orbit at least once before shutting down? The Wikipedia's 2019 in spaceflight article says that Virgin Orbit, Firefly Aerospace, Vector Launch, and stealth-mode space launch companyAstra Space have launches planned this year, and I've kind of been rooting for Relativity Space to at least get one launch off before their inevitable pivot.

Peter Beck always comes off as the most sensible of all the New Space rocketmen to me, and I couldn't be happier to hear him planning reuse.

I'm also pretty happy to hear that business is good, and that the market for small launches is growing in response to the availability. Nowhere near 130 small sat launcher companies I just can't believe, but enough for both the major players and at least *some* of the newcomers.

Followed the link on the Corona missions. I find great irony that the codenamed Corona satellites were later found to be malfunctioning due to corona discharges. Like...how did they not see that coming?

Also, points to Beck for announcing they were already substantially along in working the recovery problem and were confident in a solution, instead of announcing (like a certain major player a few weeks ago) that they were just now putting some pocket change into studying if it was, you know, a practical thing to do....

Also, points to Beck for announcing they were already substantially along in working the recovery problem and were confident in a solution, instead of announcing (like a certain major player a few weeks ago) that they were just now putting some pocket change into studying if it was, you know, a practical thing to do....

Are you talking about European or Russian early-stage discussions about maybe investigating the possibility of reuse? The European announcement is from a month and a half ago, maybe more than the "few weeks" you mentioned, but "throwing paltry amounts of money to begin to consider that which SpaceX has been doing for years" applies to both...

Honestly, even if Rocket Lab hadn't been heavily instrumenting their vehicles to better understand the problem and think through solutions, I'd still put them as #2 in reusability, simply because they've actually got a rocket that's regularly flying, they're not still working out the "get it to orbit in the first place" problem.

130? Can you image the orbital debris of 130 times the average number of launches per year?

Someone, or more likely everyone, needs to start addressing this problem.

Most CubeSats and a lot of small sats orbit low enough that their orbits will naturally decay given enough time and they'll re-enter. If a satellite has any kind of on-board propulsion it can use it to de-orbit. Most rocket second stages de-orbit themselves after delivering the payload. It's not as big a problem for the size ranges of these satellites as it may seem.

Rocket Lab shares a huge advantage that SpaceX had against its competitors: they can use customer launches to collect data and do experiments, almost "for free." For a new competitor to challenge SpaceX now, or Rocket Lab in the near future, will be extremely difficult. If Rocket Lab proves reuse to be possible and figures out the basics of reuse, there will be very little margin to other small launchers to operate in.

Imagine the situation SpaceX is in now if someone were just coming online with a disposable rocket. That's the situation the small launchers will be in within a year or two against Rocket Lab. If your rocket is not at least partially reusable, you've already lost the race before you've even launched your first rocket. So they'll be squeezed from the top by SpaceX and from the bottom by whoever wins the small sat reusable race.

Also, points to Beck for announcing they were already substantially along in working the recovery problem and were confident in a solution, instead of announcing (like a certain major player a few weeks ago) that they were just now putting some pocket change into studying if it was, you know, a practical thing to do....

Are you talking about European or Russian early-stage discussions about maybe investigating the possibility of reuse? The European announcement is from a month and a half ago, maybe more than the "few weeks" you mentioned, but "throwing paltry amounts of money to begin to consider that which SpaceX has been doing for years" applies to both...

Honestly, even if Rocket Lab hadn't been heavily instrumenting their vehicles to better understand the problem and think through solutions, I'd still put them as #2 in reusability, simply because they've actually got a rocket that's regularly flying, they're not still working out the "get it to orbit in the first place" problem.

I had honestly forgotten about the Russian "plan," (probably because I have very serious doubts about anything new from that direction) but yeah they both count. I mean ArianeSpace dropped, what, 3 million euros into a multi-year study? Soda companies spend more to test out a new can of carbonated crap, for goodness sake.

As far as real reuse in the immediate future, I'm thinking the Chinese can be taken seriously, and so can Blue Origin and of course SpaceX and now RocketLab -- anybody else?

Peter Beck always comes off as the most sensible of all the New Space rocketmen to me, and I couldn't be happier to hear him planning reuse.

I'm also pretty happy to hear that business is good, and that the market for small launches is growing in response to the availability. Nowhere near 130 small sat launcher companies I just can't believe, but enough for both the major players and at least *some* of the newcomers.

Rocket Lab has always felt to me like one of a very small number of companies who really know what they're doing and how to create a market with good customers. They're not just making flashy presentations about launch capabilities, but also offer things like their Photon satellite bus which will help accelerate the market expansion massively over just building the rocket and waiting for people to come. Between this and offering regular reliable launches instead of optimizing the last few kilos of payload, the 150kg 15" satellites have already been dubbed "Electron class". And someone else offering 250kg in five years won't suddenly find a new niche between Rocket Lab and SpaceX, but a developed market that their vehicle is uncomfortably sized for. Not because of some law of nature that demands certain sizes, but because Rocket Lab is actually building a market and smallsat ecosystem.

Peter Beck always comes off as the most sensible of all the New Space rocketmen to me, and I couldn't be happier to hear him planning reuse.

I'm also pretty happy to hear that business is good, and that the market for small launches is growing in response to the availability. Nowhere near 130 small sat launcher companies I just can't believe, but enough for both the major players and at least *some* of the newcomers.

Rocket Lab has always felt to me like one of a very small number of companies who really know what they're doing and how to create a market with good customers. They're not just making flashy presentations about launch capabilities, but also offer things like their Photon satellite bus which will help accelerate the market expansion massively over just building the rocket and waiting for people to come. Between this and offering regular reliable launches instead of optimizing the last few kilos of payload, the 150kg 15" satellites have already been dubbed "Electron class". And someone else offering 250kg in five years won't suddenly find a new niche between Rocket Lab and SpaceX, but a developed market that their vehicle is uncomfortably sized for. Not because of some law of nature that demands certain sizes, but because Rocket Lab is actually building a market and smallsat ecosystem.

This is a really good point. I don't know if there's something about the 15" ESPA ring that optimizes for 150kg, but I noticed when the SpaceX smallsat announcement specifically mentioned both of those specs, and thought of it as an "Electron-class payload." Knowing that exactly this capacity exists will definitely push people to build payloads that take advantage of it, and SpaceX may be reacting to that by tuning their services to what the Electron can provide.

The Photon is an even bigger advantage, since it more closely ties potential customers to Rocket Lab and increases the pain they'd feel if they tried to switch to someone else. It's the sort of value-add you can only perfect when you've got the basics down, further cementing their first-mover advantage.

Peter Beck always comes off as the most sensible of all the New Space rocketmen to me, and I couldn't be happier to hear him planning reuse.

I'm also pretty happy to hear that business is good, and that the market for small launches is growing in response to the availability. Nowhere near 130 small sat launcher companies I just can't believe, but enough for both the major players and at least *some* of the newcomers.

Rocket Lab has always felt to me like one of a very small number of companies who really know what they're doing and how to create a market with good customers. They're not just making flashy presentations about launch capabilities, but also offer things like their Photon satellite bus which will help accelerate the market expansion massively over just building the rocket and waiting for people to come. Between this and offering regular reliable launches instead of optimizing the last few kilos of payload, the 150kg 15" satellites have already been dubbed "Electron class". And someone else offering 250kg in five years won't suddenly find a new niche between Rocket Lab and SpaceX, but a developed market that their vehicle is uncomfortably sized for. Not because of some law of nature that demands certain sizes, but because Rocket Lab is actually building a market and smallsat ecosystem.

This is a really good point. I don't know if there's something about the 15" ESPA ring that optimizes for 150kg, but I noticed when the SpaceX smallsat announcement specifically mentioned both of those specs, and thought of it as an "Electron-class payload." Knowing that exactly this capacity exists will definitely push people to build payloads that take advantage of it, and SpaceX may be reacting to that by tuning their services to what the Electron can provide.

The Photon is an even bigger advantage, since it more closely ties potential customers to Rocket Lab and increases the pain they'd feel if they tried to switch to someone else. It's the sort of value-add you can only perfect when you've got the basics down, further cementing their first-mover advantage.

i wouldn't be surprised if they eventually offer Photon separately but it's really the propulsion system it uses, it's a green monoprop gel motor

Anyone have a guess as to how Rocket Lab plans to deal with the problem of reentry? Falcon 1, and the first couple Falcon 9 flights, were equipped with landing parachutes but never got the chance to use them, as they didn't survive reentry. That forced them to use retropropulsion for the reentry burn, to shed speed, maintain control, and protect the rocket motors, and they figured once they had that, a landing burn was easier than parachutes + saltwater hardening (Falcon 9 is too big for a helicopter to snag, so they just planned to soft-land in the ocean).

I had a theory that Rocket Lab might put all the heavy batteries at the top, and try to re-enter nose-first, with a large heatshield there. But the animation clearly showed it reentering the atmosphere engines-first. IIRC Electron stages at higher altitude and velocity than Falcon 9, so it should have even more difficulty.

I don't see how they can survive without a heat shield or an entry burn, the stage will just be moving too damn fast otherwise. The term "decelerators" makes me think the latter, but they don't seem to have a lot of fuel margin, and restarting their existing engine would be a huge leap. I dunno, maybe some kind of retrorocket on the outside? It would explain how we're supposed to be able to notice the changes so easily.

I don't see how they can survive without a heat shield or an entry burn, the stage will just be moving too damn fast otherwise. The term "decelerators" makes me think the latter, but they don't seem to have a lot of fuel margin, and restarting their existing engine would be a huge leap. I dunno, maybe some kind of retrorocket on the outside? It would explain how we're supposed to be able to notice the changes so easily.

Something to keep in mind is that the ballistic coefficient of the Electron first stage compared to the Falcon 9 first stage will be lower. It's a square cube thing. They should be able to scrub off speed at higher altitude than Falcon 9, particularly with the decelerators Beck mentioned in the interview.

10 years ago, who would have even considered that as a reasonable thing? Of course, there will be a shakeout but what an interesting time to be a spectator.

It only took 60 fucking years, but the space industry is FINALLY taking the same trajectory that the aircraft industry took after World War One. What's surprising to ME is that it took private industry THIS LONG to get that hint.

Rocket Lab keeps saying "flying once a month," but so far this year (and late last year) they're closer to "flying every other month." Which, don't get me wrong, is still impressive: if they fly customer payloads six times in 2019, that's six more launches than any of their competitors will have this year. (A few claim they'll have their first test launch this year, but it took Rocket Lab 1.5 years to go from "first all-up launch attempt" to "regularly flying customer payloads," and I trust Beck when he says that that type of ramp-up is just as hard as the initial launch.)

Still, it feels like the "Rocket Lab steamroller" has yet to actually materialize. I'm sure it will, just like the "SpaceX steamroller" did, but they're not there yet.

Rocket Lab's ramp up in flight rate has gone better than SpaceX by any measure. One of the defining aspects of SpaceX is the way they've recovered from multiple serious setbacks, and Rocket Lab hasn't had any of that. If anything, maybe things have gone *too* smoothly for them, and we don't know how resilient they'll be when they do inevitably have a setback. But that's one of those problems that any young launch provider would *love* to have.

The only reason to doubt Rocket Lab concerns the realistic demand for their type of service. Nobody has come into this industry wet behind the ears and done as well as Rocket Lab has in such a short amount of time. Barring the one caveat I just raised, they will crush their competition, and they'll only have to worry about SpaceX and Blue Origin peeling off some of their customers.

I think part of the calculus for Peter Beck changing his mind on reusability is simply that he's so far ahead of the competition that it becomes a question of "why not?" Just like SpaceX did before, they have the luxury of working on reusability launch after launch, with customers partially subsidizing the development costs, while still being by far the most cost-effective service in its class. Even if they never make it through reentry, they're still in a position to dominate their market segment.

10 years ago, who would have even considered that as a reasonable thing? Of course, there will be a shakeout but what an interesting time to be a spectator.

It only took 60 fucking years, but the space industry is FINALLY taking the same trajectory that the aircraft industry took after World War One. What's surprising to ME is that it took private industry THIS LONG to get that hint.

The barriers to entry are much greater for orbital rocketry than aeroplanes. People build kit planes in their garage all the time. Orbital rockets require much, much more resources. The demand for launch services was very small until recent times as well. Who can raise a billion dollars on the promise that if they succeed in lowering launch costs by an order of magnitude, sufficient demand will simply appear?

10 years ago, who would have even considered that as a reasonable thing? Of course, there will be a shakeout but what an interesting time to be a spectator.

It only took 60 fucking years, but the space industry is FINALLY taking the same trajectory that the aircraft industry took after World War One. What's surprising to ME is that it took private industry THIS LONG to get that hint.

Private industries were trying, but not getting the needed support (neither financial or governmental). Lack of governmental support (in the sense of at least backing away from treating it all as missile technology -- which to be fair it was, to a degree -- and simplifying the paperwork) was probably the bigger obstacle.

See for example Space Services, Inc (Percheron, Conestoga) and Pacific American Launch Systems (Phoenix), and the German OTRAG (yay asparagus staging!).

I don't see how they can survive without a heat shield or an entry burn, the stage will just be moving too damn fast otherwise. The term "decelerators" makes me think the latter, but they don't seem to have a lot of fuel margin, and restarting their existing engine would be a huge leap. I dunno, maybe some kind of retrorocket on the outside? It would explain how we're supposed to be able to notice the changes so easily.

Something to keep in mind is that the ballistic coefficient of the Electron first stage compared to the Falcon 9 first stage will be lower. It's a square cube thing. They should be able to scrub off speed at higher altitude than Falcon 9, particularly with the decelerators Beck mentioned in the interview.

So I just watched the "Make it Rain" launch from June (damn, I always forget how good Electron launches sound), and they staged at 81km - they're above 99% of the atmosphere at that altitude. Is a speed brake or (wacky) a rotor going to slow them down that much? For a deceleration system to work, it needs to dump a hell of a lot of velocity very fast, or they just end up out of the atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory, and then you need a heat shield or retropropulsion when you hit the entry interface anyway.

I don't see how they can survive without a heat shield or an entry burn, the stage will just be moving too damn fast otherwise. The term "decelerators" makes me think the latter, but they don't seem to have a lot of fuel margin, and restarting their existing engine would be a huge leap. I dunno, maybe some kind of retrorocket on the outside? It would explain how we're supposed to be able to notice the changes so easily.

Something to keep in mind is that the ballistic coefficient of the Electron first stage compared to the Falcon 9 first stage will be lower. It's a square cube thing. They should be able to scrub off speed at higher altitude than Falcon 9, particularly with the decelerators Beck mentioned in the interview.

So I just watched the "Make it Rain" launch from June (damn, I always forget how good Electron launches sound), and they staged at 81km - they're above 99% of the atmosphere at that altitude. Is a speed brake or (wacky) a rotor going to slow them down that much? For a deceleration system to work, it needs to dump a hell of a lot of velocity very fast, or they just end up out of the atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory, and then you need a heat shield or retropropulsion when you hit the entry interface anyway.

Could you get a big drag chute open at that altitude?

heat shield, possibly running fluids through the cooling channels of the engines as part of it

Anyone have a guess as to how Rocket Lab plans to deal with the problem of reentry? Falcon 1, and the first couple Falcon 9 flights, were equipped with landing parachutes but never got the chance to use them, as they didn't survive reentry. That forced them to use retropropulsion for the reentry burn, to shed speed, maintain control, and protect the rocket motors, and they figured once they had that, a landing burn was easier than parachutes + saltwater hardening (Falcon 9 is too big for a helicopter to snag, so they just planned to soft-land in the ocean).

I had a theory that Rocket Lab might put all the heavy batteries at the top, and try to re-enter nose-first, with a large heatshield there. But the animation clearly showed it reentering the atmosphere engines-first. IIRC Electron stages at higher altitude and velocity than Falcon 9, so it should have even more difficulty.

Being lighter and smaller than the Falcon booster helps reduce reentry heating by reducing the ballistic coefficient.

Electron empty first stage weighs half of one of the F9 fairings (900kg vs 1900kg). They don't need retropropulsion or speed bleed-off to survive the atmosphere so it's reasonable to assume at a basic level that the Electron wouldn't either and could just use aerodynamic braking.

The big question is how they'll protect the business end of the rocket through reentry. I think it's a fairly safe assumption that they'll be using one or more inflatable ballute type devices as their primary means of deceleration. This is the lightest way generate the amount of drag they'll need in the hypersonic regime. There could be a classic spheroid ballute deployed from the interstage, one or more toroidal ballutes to help divert shock waves from the airframe, or a combination of concepts along these lines.

Since there's no engine restarts, it's possible they could use an inflatable (or otherwise deployable) heatshield on the bottom as well, but the simplest implementation for that would require eliminating the center engine. Maybe that could fall under the category of a "block upgrade" like Peter Beck mentioned, if they can improve the performance of the Rutherford engines and battery packs enough to generate liftoff thrust with only 8 engines. Maybe that's a bridge too far.

They might just have to pile on stationary thermal protection materials. The vehicle might survive reentry and be able to be recovered even if the business end is too badly damaged to fly again, which might help them understand what they need to do to achieve practical reuse.

10 years ago, who would have even considered that as a reasonable thing? Of course, there will be a shakeout but what an interesting time to be a spectator.

It only took 60 fucking years, but the space industry is FINALLY taking the same trajectory that the aircraft industry took after World War One. What's surprising to ME is that it took private industry THIS LONG to get that hint.

The barriers to entry are much greater for orbital rocketry than aeroplanes. People build kit planes in their garage all the time. Orbital rockets require much, much more resources. The demand for launch services was very small until recent times as well. Who can raise a billion dollars on the promise that if they succeed in lowering launch costs by an order of magnitude, sufficient demand will simply appear?

Smallsat orbital launch can be done for under $100M from scratch now, but it took an electronics revolution for that to happen, and for smallsats to be worth the effort.

130? Can you image the orbital debris of 130 times the average number of launches per year?

Someone, or more likely everyone, needs to start addressing this problem.

Most CubeSats and a lot of small sats orbit low enough that their orbits will naturally decay given enough time and they'll re-enter. If a satellite has any kind of on-board propulsion it can use it to de-orbit. Most rocket second stages de-orbit themselves after delivering the payload. It's not as big a problem for the size ranges of these satellites as it may seem.

I don't know if there's something about the 15" ESPA ring that optimizes for 150kg, but I noticed when the SpaceX smallsat announcement specifically mentioned both of those specs, and thought of it as an "Electron-class payload."

The 15" ring was designed for 180kg, so I'm not sure why they would have derated it to 150kg, other than it makes a nice even half of the 300kg on the larger 24" ring.

A year ago Rocket Lab was saying that after Electron they would do a bigger rocket. I am glad that they have instead decided to work on reusability. With SpaceX catching fairings, dropping prices, and rapidly working towards a fully reusable rocket I don’t feel that this would be a good time to try and enter the medium lift market with an expendable vehicle.

With a smaller rocket and a faster ramp up than SpaceX, and the knowledge that it can be done, Rocket Lab should be able to iterate to a reusable booster faster than SpaceX did. At that point Blue Origin might even have to start watching their rear view mirrors carefully.

The big question is how they'll protect the business end of the rocket through reentry. I think it's a fairly safe assumption that they'll be using one or more inflatable ballute type devices as their primary means of deceleration. This is the lightest way generate the amount of drag they'll need in the hypersonic regime. There could be a classic spheroid ballute deployed from the interstage, one or more toroidal ballutes to help divert shock waves from the airframe, or a combination of concepts along these lines.

Since there's no engine restarts, it's possible they could use an inflatable (or otherwise deployable) heatshield on the bottom as well, but the simplest implementation for that would require eliminating the center engine. Maybe that could fall under the category of a "block upgrade" like Peter Beck mentioned, if they can improve the performance of the Rutherford engines and battery packs enough to generate liftoff thrust with only 8 engines. Maybe that's a bridge too far.

They might just have to pile on stationary thermal protection materials. The vehicle might survive reentry and be able to be recovered even if the business end is too badly damaged to fly again, which might help them understand what they need to do to achieve practical reuse.

Perhaps an inflatable heatshield could pop out at the interstage end, so the business end wouldn't need to take the brunt of the re-entry heat.

Still, it feels like the "Rocket Lab steamroller" has yet to actually materialize. I'm sure it will, just like the "SpaceX steamroller" did, but they're not there yet.

It took SpaceX the better part of a decade from the first flight of its Falcon 9 rocket to get to "Steamroller status." Rocket Lab is on a pretty good cadence right now for a company that only started flying in May, 2017. They probably make once a month by the end of this year, or so, which would be damned impressive. (Especially when you look at their competition in the smallsat launch industry).

Once the ground is rolled, a steamroller is no longer needed for quite some time. 2019 will be SpaceX’s first year of decreased launch numbers. They can make up for that with Starlink. What will rocketlab do with its factory once the steamrolling is over?

I kind of wonder if SpaceX might eventually offer to buy out Rocket Labs. That's not great for consolidation of rocket companies, I know, but their big advance is in the engine printing. I could see SpaceX deciding they need that expertise at some point and just aquihiring the whole lot of 'em. Getting the rest of the small-sat market is just gravy.